


Red Handed

by coyotes



Category: BioShock
Genre: Addiction, Drugs, Gen, it's not really Atlas/Jack but it's implied, yet another Jack fic with an Atlas cameo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 17:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1907790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotes/pseuds/coyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack finds the stash of ADAM Atlas had been keeping to sparingly use as incentive to keep him loyal and gets high off his ass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Handed

**Author's Note:**

> I like to headcanon that once Tenenbaum took the WYK out of Jack she inadvertently took his inability to become addicted to this kind of stuff as well, so yeah. An excuse for Jack to be addicted to the stuff, hell yes.

Atlas had promised him ADAM.

Atlas had promised him so many things, hadn’t he? Promised him a little too much, since now Jack couldn’t tell the difference between a promise and a bold-faced lie. That was how it was with Atlas.

Jack was tired of it. 

He’d been living on the edge as of late, an edge that nobody should ever have to tilt on, swaying back and forth on their toes while an endless pit of absolutely nothing but dry darkness smiled back up at them. There was a difference between the rush of fighting splicers and this, this low that left his veins hollow and stinging for more, more, more. Always more. Never less. 

Atlas had promised him _so much ADAM_. He was lucky if he got two or three hypos a week from the man. There was nothing better than a little push at the end of a plunger and everything went away for long enough, he could wash all the bad thoughts out of his brain and focus on a swath of red flowing up his arm and into his heart, back out again. But a few breaths and moments of stillness didn’t fix him. Nothing fixed the _itch_. 

Could he really call it an itch? It was more like the time when he was younger and he tripped down a hill and landed in a bush full of Poison Ivy -- he spent the next few weeks crying and miserable, covered in rashes and blisters on every inch of exposed skin.

Had that really happened? It must have. 

But this was an internal itch, not on his skin but rather just beneath it and in his blood that had gotten so used to being coated with ADAM that blood was no longer thick enough to run right. He felt that it was similar to being pumped with water; so, so different from ADAM. 

Where did Atlas keep the needles? Where did Atlas keep the _fucking_ needles? Jack had no idea – he’d left the place a mess in his search, upturned drawers, opened cabinets, doors swung open. This wasn’t like Fontaine’s apartment, Atlas had been set up somewhere else much less linear because of safety or whatever his excuse had been, it was like a goddamn labyrinth. Jack was about to blow up the damn thing and hope for the best, honestly. 

What else had Atlas promised him, huh? A whole boatload more than ADAM, that was for sure. We’re gonna run this show, boyo, Rapture will be a better place, yada yada yada, he didn’t understand why Atlas even kept up the accent around him anymore. Maybe he was just antagonizing him. Dangling a fake reality in front of his teary eyes and telling him it’ll be all right in a voice laced with honey just to fuck with his head.

Jack wanted to punch him in the face. 

Jack wanted to do so much to him. 

He scratched at his left arm until faint lines became etched in his skin, the sound his shoes made on the floor drowned out by his heart pounding in his ears. There were bugs swarming there, not literal but just as loud and obnoxious as the real ones, he knew exactly what it was like to have bees buzzing in his ears and this was no different except the white noise went straight to his core rather than centering about his eardrums and sticking there. It was a physical vibration, not a noise. But waves were waves and a difference didn’t matter if he couldn’t explain it.

The next door he came to was locked and that was a good sign; who the hell put anything not worth a dime behind a locked door? Nobody was who. Fuckin’ nobody. 

He tried the handle as if that would somehow open it, like this was _exactly_ like jiggling the lid of a kiddie proof medicine jar until it popped. The noise the knob made made his watered-down blood boil and he wished that Atlas was here instead of off doing his business elsewhere so that he could grab him by the hair at the back of his head and slam his face into it to bust it open, but sadly he only had his own hands and wits about him so that wasn’t an option unless he wanted to wait a little.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

Jack clenched his teeth ‘till they were sore with strain and kicked at the knob as hard as he could, finding brief satisfaction at the way the knob gave a hearty metal clang when it hit the floor. But that passed and he inhaled sharply, ramming his shoulder into the door to open it. It was a little violent, sure, but Jack was too frustrated to deal with obstacles just then. 

He tumbled into a room that was too dimly lit (and by dimly lit he meant pitch black darkness) and he clung to the wall in search of a light switch. The boy found one, snapping it on and squinting his eyes in the new light until he had at least a marginal chance of growing used to it. At the very back of his mind he was aware that this was a room he shouldn’t go, this was – this was a study, wasn’t it?

A hard bang and a sudden pain at his hip warned him that yes, it definitely was a study. And that was a desk. Jack rubbed at the point of contact for a minute but inevitably turned his attention elsewhere after a miraculous five seconds of paid attention.

His eyes fell on another door.

Oh, shit. 

He crossed the room too fast to be considered a rationally thinking human being, fingers closing around the second knob with a hard throb of anticipation at the back of his brain. And when he turned his wrist the knob turned as well; his heart stopped, he pulled open the door.

A closet. 

A cabinet.

His hands were shaking as he touched the top of it, afraid to open it. He’d been disappointed too many times to count these past few weeks and another one – he wasn’t sure he could handle it. Jack wasn’t the most emotionally sound man down in Rapture, though that was easily said about everyone else, and being denied something he needed for so long didn’t help the process of recuperation in the least. Either way he shut his eyes tightly and grabbed for the littler knob – why were there so many damn knobs – and pulled gently.

There had never been a sweeter sound than that of wood sliding on wood. Jack chanced a glance down at the opened drawer.

The sight of red glowing sharply in the dark brought a moan up from his throat. 

“Jeez,” he whispered as he touched over one of the hypos before him as if touching too hard would pop it and gently was the way to go. Had Atlas been stupid enough to keep nothing but one locked door from him and _this_? 

No, he couldn’t be that dumb. Atlas was a smart man. So this must be his to take; of course. Jack closed his hand around the first one he could grab and sunk down by the cabinet. He licked his lips once; he was too dry but – fuck, Jack balanced the needle edge near his vein, surrounded by smaller, faint marks and jammed it into his arm. He hissed – it was never easy to do that, getting used to that sort of pain wasn’t an option but he had a tolerance, which was all that mattered. Plus, the rewards were well worth the pain.

The plunger went down with a tap of his thumb, followed by a long sigh and Jack stretching his legs out on the floor. His veins lit up beneath his skin while his eyelids fluttered –

\-- Then it disappeared. So fast. His eyes flicked up to the open drawer. He could stop now and not risk himself further trouble. He was perfectly capable of stopping now that he’d had a taste and he could move on but Atlas, Atlas wouldn’t forget this. A broken door handle would be evidence enough of what his pet had done while he was out. Atlas wouldn’t give him more ADAM. Atlas wouldn’t give him anything.

Jack reached up to grab another needle, dropping it in his lap with a soft grunt. He was vaguely aware that a few stray tears had made their way down his cheeks, tears of relief that fell hot and wet on his skin as he lined up the second shot, pushing that one as well as he could through the same hole as the first.

It was no easy task, lining them up perfectly with watery vision and a barely-functioning thought process, but he managed well enough. The second one was more satisfying than the first; Jack tilted his head up towards the ceiling and let his mouth go slack. 

By the third, his eyes had begun to dot red at the edge of his vision.

\--

He was too numb to move his fingers at the points he wanted them to go, too blurry to line up a needle and jam it in. He’d done that enough. He was heavy and his left arm was sore, so eventually he stopped injecting it – and started swallowing it.

ADAM was not meant to be swallowed this way, not at all. Jack was feeling creative, though, so rules hardly mattered, he’d already broken about fifty by being in this very room. The first one was easily fixed by snapping the needle up at the base until pushing down on the top until enough of it oozed out. Jack pressed his lips to the open end, sucking until he had to tilt it straight up to get anything out of it. 

It was sweet – a sickly sweet, not like fruit or candy but one that made his stomach grumble in an effort to process what it was and his throat a tube of lingering numbness. The sort of sweet that hung in the air and blurred his vision even further.

Though that was more of a feeling than a taste. He could feel the color sweet.

Wait, sweet wasn’t a color. 

Jack shrugged and fumbled around for another needle, cheeks flushed red and the rest of him barely obeying the commands he gave. As soon as he had a bottle in the palm of his hand he toppled over on his back, body heavy and full but far from sated; if anything he wanted to keep shoving more and more into his system until he physically couldn’t take more, and then some. Jack knocked the needle out of the way and resumed the process of sucking like this was a bottle and he was a little kid all over again, a bit of ADAM dribbling down the side of his face as if to complete the look. 

Jack licked off the rest of it as it came through the end before tossing the empty glass away, taking a couple fingers and wiping off the stuff that had gone down his chin, cheeks, wherever it was. It wasn’t much but he licked his fingers anyway, head too heavy to lift or move – huh. He couldn’t feel his face. Jack placed a palm flat over the middle and laughed, sliding it down over his nose and mouth and eventually grabbing at his jaw, absolutely enthralled by the fact that he couldn’t feel a damn thing.

There was a split connection there that he liked. His hand could feel his face, his mouth, but his face didn’t respond the same way. Like he was touching someone else, and that someone else wasn’t him. The laughter died off and he hummed a bit, reaching up as well as he could to grab the last one in the second drawer. He’d stopped counting after a while, after he’d gotten distracted by the streaks of red floating through the air in front of him with the same light that sparklers gave off, a ribbon of rosy light in the sky. 

He dropped this one, heard it shatter on the floor by his head. Jack’s reaction was late, a disjointed flinch around half a minute later. He turned to the source of the vibration in the air and stared at the pool of ADAM on the floor, a glorious puddle of light that shivered each time Jack blinked his eyes. Jack reached out a hand to touch it and came to the realization that coating one’s hand in ADAM left him with a hand… covered in ADAM. He lifted his fingers out of the stuff, tendrils of blinding red and tints of burnt gold at the edges (why was that, he wondered but stared in awestruck love for this revelation) dripping down due to gravity’s role in the world. Hm. Jack placed his hand on the floor away from the slick and used that to balance himself on his knees (with the help of his other hand) in front of it, and once he felt he was properly up he took the hand covered in ADAM off the ground.

Jack became so absolutely mesmerized by the red stain in the shape of his hand on the floor that he lost the balance he’d gained, top half too heavy to keep up and away from the force of gravity and his own face fell into the puddle, ADAM clinging to the edges of hair it managed to touch and covering up nothing more than an eye and a cheek. 

He hastily sat himself up, only hand not covered in it wiping off his face and clearing the small bits of glass that hung in his hair – he was actually pretty damn lucky. Nothing would have been better than a shard of glass in his cheek, huh?

Oh well. He couldn’t feel it if there was. No loss for him.

So he was covered in it, numb, his eyelids wouldn’t stop drooping and everything was drenched in bright red silhouettes of light – did that even work? Silhouettes of light? Those were dark, okay, that didn’t work. Uh, hm.

Jack became distracted by a spark of red from above him, not thinking for a second that it could have possibly been a spot of the stuff that’d clung to some of his eyelashes and he groped for it, balling his hand into a loose fist in an effort to trap it.

Didn’t work, and Jack snorted angrily, turning towards the cabinet and grabbing at the next thing he could get – these were in such great supply, weren’t they? Jack had never splurged so much in his fucking life. 

He was tired of sitting up and so he propped his knees up in the air, half of his face squished into the floor and his top half there too like a downward facing dog on his knees and way more lax than the position generally asked for, breaking the needle in his hand the same way he’d done to countless others.

As he swallowed, though, he noticed a sound coming from the floor. A real sound – music? He swore he could hear a piano on a record coming from downstairs, sensing it dazedly through the flooring. That was definitely a song. 

He couldn’t make it out too well, coming and going like a radio station that wasn’t tuned in well enough and every time he focused less, it went out.

\-- _shake my nerves and you_ –

You what? What did you do? Jack took one final swig from the glass, groaning out his simultaneous disapproval and lack thereof of the lights dancing in his face and making him queasy with an overabundance of visual stimuli at his disposal. 

\-- _My brain_ –

He was pretty sure he didn’t have one of those anymore, thank you. He was perfectly fine with laying on the floor like this with his ass in the air for the rest of eternity but he turned anyway, laying comfortably on his side with his head near the drying pond of ADAM near the top of his head and some of it caked on his hands, sweater, red fingerprints and glass scattered about the closet. There were footsteps and someone was calling his name from an ocean away.

Nicknames. Someone wasn’t calling his name. Jack ignored them because they were so _far_ , wasting their breath. It seemed like those footsteps went on forever, infinite steps and each one lasted minutes before the next came down, thump, thump, thump. Not like his heart. His heart was beating so slow he couldn’t really feel it.

\-- _Drive a man insane_ \--

It went quiet apart from the piano and the record occasionally skipping, he’d never heard such a happy song in his life and he smiled on the floor, a moment or decade of silence before the noises went louder tenfold in his ears. A voice was made out, tinted with the same gold as the ADAM had been but in his ears rather than in front of his eyes. He could hear _gold_ and it was beautiful, Jack perked up at the sound and the utterance of his name but he didn’t move apart from a head tilt. Couldn’t manage much else. 

Movement flooded his vision at the door of the closet and he shut his eyes but the flaming white in the shape of a shirt and blue, blue so blue it was the very definition, that voice, he felt like he was going to puke but then – for a reason he couldn’t place – comfort washed over him and he opened his eyes again, met with a man that could only be a dream on one knee in front of his face. Jack smiled weakly back at the dream man, eyes too unfocused to make out any clear shapes apart from his eyes – blue, blue, blue. 

He heard a whistle that might have registered as bad news if he wasn’t completely off his face, some more words in that golden voice that didn’t sound like a language he knew. Everything was so jumbled, he made out his name but that was it, a hand making contact with his face.

It felt like a slap but it wasn’t, just a touch that was made to get him to look up and focus but Jack couldn’t, said so with a huff and a whine. 

Jack did try to say something, whether it was a ‘fuck you’ or ‘love you’ but by the way the blurred face in front of him tilted he didn’t understand either, and Jack went right back to smiling until he became too exhausted to keep it up, drifting in and out of consciousness as the world swirled around him and his flesh rose up with goosebumps as something occasionally touched him, moved him, he wasn’t sure there was a difference at this point.

_Goodness gracious, great balls of fire._


End file.
